PDEA chief insists on ‘shabu’ smuggle

Customs and narcotics agents are zeroing in on the smugglers of “shabu” (crystal meth) that slipped into the country last month through Manila International Container Port (MICP), congressmen were told on Thursday.

During a hearing held by the House committee on dangerous drugs chaired by Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, Director General Aaron Aquino, chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), said investigators believed the Golden Triangle drug syndicate was behind the shabu smuggling.

Two magnetic lifters intercepted at MICP on August 7 were found to have contained 355 kilograms of shabu worth P2.4 billion.

The following day, four more magnetic lifters were found in a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite province, but these were empty.

When asked by lawmakers about the progress of the investigation, PDEA and Bureau of Customs (BOC) officials proposed a closed-door hearing, saying they did not want to publicly disclose their intelligence information.

National security

Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop however, said it was not up to the PDEA and BOC officials but to the committee to determine if national security was involved.

PDEA Calabarzon Director Adrian Alvariño showed pictures of the truck that carried the freight container with the four magnetic lifters to the Cavite warehouse, as well as two luxury vehicles with “Chinese-looking” people who went to the warehouse when the cargo arrived in early July.

Alvariño said the magnetic lifters seized at MICP were also destined for the same warehouse in Cavite. All lifters have similar cables and mechanisms.

PDEA investigators interviewed the owner and maintainer of the warehouse and came up with the names Wang, Chung and Fong as the men who rented the place with the help of brokers.

Chung claimed to be an officer of Red Day Machinery Corp., which turned out to be fictitious.

The truck driver and the forklift operator also told the PDEA that three to six Chinese-looking men arrived and ordered them to bring the magnetic lifters in.

They never returned

After the Chinese left, they never returned.

The consignee on record, on the other hand, said another broker just used her company’s name to import the magnetic lifters, which came from Haiphong, Vietnam, via Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

The two lifters found at MICP came from Malaysia and passed through Hong Kong before being shipped to Manila.

Aquino stuck to his earlier claim that the four magnetic lifters found in Cavite contained shabu.

He said swab tests were done on the lifters found at MICP on Wednesday and the results were negative. But that, he said, did not mean the lifters did not contain shabu, because sniffer dogs had detected the illegal drug in the devices.

Questioned by Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo, Aquino said he was “positive” that the four lifters did contain drugs.

“Even if there is no corpus delicti (body of evidence), they (magnetic lifters from Cavite) contained drugs because what we intercepted in MICP is identical and similar. What’s the difference? It’s only the shabu that’s not there,” he said.—WITH A REPORT FROM PATHRICIA ANN V. ROXAS